As competition to host the new Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory campus heats up, two of six cities still in the running are launching advertising campaigns to boost their bids.

Richmond rolled out its “Richmond (hearts) LBNL” campaign with buttons and a billboard off Interstate 80. Alameda is distributing lawn signs and hanging banners declaring, “Let’s put the (Alameda) Point to work.”

The two cities, which beat out more than a dozen other proposals to make it on the shortlist of six, are competing to host a sprawling second campus that will allow for future growth and accommodate 800 workers who have been pushed from the lab’s cramped Berkeley hills facility and into off-site locations.

Both say their campaigns are intended to demonstrate community support for the project, one of the lab’s stated criteria for selection.

But other cities have rejected this approach as inappropriate.

“This is a hell of a lot more serious than that,” said Walter Cohen, head of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency.

Instead of engaging in public relations, Oakland is working to ensure that their project developer can deliver on time and on budget, he said.

A recent study estimates that the three current off-site lab facilities that the new campus would replace generate an estimated $236 million in spending impacts.

“This is one of the most serious development attractions that’s going on in the Bay Area,” Cohen said. “It never would have dawned on me to buy buttons and lawn signs,” he said.

The notion of campaign buttons drew a long laugh from Berkeley spokeswoman Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. The city is letting developers handle their own bids, she said.

City staff in Albany and Emeryville said that they were confident their proposals would speak for themselves.

Lab spokesman Jeff Miller said the committee welcomes all signs of community support.

“We like to be liked,” he said.

Lab representatives will be attending public meetings with each of the finalists in the coming weeks and expect to make a choice by November.

Alameda, which is offering the lab a tract of land on Alameda Point free of charge, is putting $20,000 toward its “Let’s put the Point to work” initiative.

In addition to hanging banners and handing out signs, the city is also launching a postcard campaign and holding more than 20 community meetings. The efforts are detailed on the city’s “Alameda Loves the Lab” Facebook page.

Richmond is using donated blue and yellow buttons and billboard space to win lab support for the Richmond Field Station, which the University of California already owns.

In addition to demonstrating grass roots enthusiasm, the “Richmond hearts LBNL” push is intended to catch the lab’s attention, according to City Manager Bill Lindsay.

“Part of it is just making sure that it’s on the lab’s radar screen and they take notice,” he said. “It’s really no different from any other kind of advertising.”

The six finalists
Alameda Point in Alameda
Berkeley Aquatic Park West in West Berkeley
Brooklyn Basin in Oakland
Emeryville/Berkeley, on property occupied by the Berkeley Lab
Golden Gate Fields, spanning Berkeley and Albany
Richmond Field Station, a site owned by UC, which runs the Berkeley Lab

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